"The economy needs help from the government. The state should
engage outside experts to pick winning technologies to subsidize in order to bring
more jobs to Michigan." This is the battle cry from Lansing as Gov. Jennifer
Granholm campaigns for her "Jobs Tomorrow" proposal, which would sell $2 billion
in state bonds to provide money for state investment, guided by scientific
experts, in cutting-edge research and development in Michigan.

Students of history will immediately ask the key question,
What is the track record of government investment in industries, job creation
and economic development? The answer is that such experiments form a long train
of disasters.

When Michigan first joined the union in 1837, its political
leaders believed that the state’s northern location was too far from the western trail through Ohio, Indiana and Illinois. To lure
industry, Gov. Stevens T. Mason and the Michigan Legislature sold $5 million in
bonds in an approach somewhat similar to what Gov. Granholm is proposing with
Jobs Tomorrow. The purpose of the bonds was to build "high-tech" industries of
the era — railroads and canals to detour businesses and people northward to
Michigan.

In keeping with political and expert opinion, the bonds
were sold, and experts surveyed routes for one major canal and two
railroads. The canal cost $350,000 and earned $90.32 in tolls before it was
abandoned. Then came the railroads; the state ran out of money before completing
either one. What’s more, both railroads were so shoddily constructed that trains
were barely safe on them.

At that point, Michigan quit having politicians guide
industrial improvements. The state sold both railroads to private investors, and
in less than three years, they had both railroads rebuilt and running smoothly
across the state. Michigan voters celebrated this event by changing the state
Constitution in 1850 so that state government could "not subscribe to, or be
interested in, the stock of any company, association or corporation."

Gov. Granholm’s proposal recalls the state’s early railroad
fiasco. She wants independent experts from the American Association for the
Advancement of Science to help find winning technology investments for the
state. She even wants to amend the constitutional provisions stemming from the
state Constitution of 1850 in order to allow the state to hold equity in some of these
new businesses.

There are three reasons why Michigan’s $2 billion in 2005
would probably go the way of Michigan’s $5 million in the 1830s. First, there
are inherent problems with economic projects shaped by politicians and
"experts," who use other peoples’ money, rather than their own, as entrepreneurs
and investors do. Politicians have every incentive today, as they did in the
1830s, to use economic development projects to gain votes, since governors and
legislators can win elections when they bring outside industries to their
districts or to the regions that support them.

Second, the so-called experts often have a hidden agenda.
The impartiality of the AAAS has been questioned: Patrick J. Michaels, senior
fellow in environmental studies at the Washington, D.C.-based Cato Institute,
has argued that Science magazine, a publication of the AAAS, summarily
rejects articles that question the idea that global warming will be large and
that it will require a major public policy response. Experts who have no direct
financial stake in the investments they recommend have every incentive to
promote ideas that fit their conception of how the world should work,
rather than how it actually does work.

Third, even when experts put aside their personal agendas,
they are notoriously poor at picking winners and losers. This bad record goes
beyond the canals and railroads they selected for Michigan in the 1830s: They
almost did it again with the auto industry. One hundred years ago, many of them
picked horses and carriages over cars. The president of the Michigan Savings
Bank in 1903 refused to back Ford Motor Company, because, "The horse is here to
stay, but the automobile is only a novelty — a fad." Six years later, after Ford
scraped up the private capital to build his first Model T, the experts at
Scientific American concluded, "The automobile has practically reached the
limits of its development. …"

Dr. Burton W. Folsom Jr. is professor of history at Hillsdale
College and senior fellow in economic education with the Mackinac Center for
Public Policy, a research and educational institute headquartered in Midland,
Mich. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is hereby granted, provided that
the author and the Center are properly cited.